Monday, March 9, 2009

We haven't really seen Sonny Day before in this blog as I didn't have a whole lot to say about him in his Introduction. When returning to his lot this time, I discovered that I must have only played him for a couple sim days instead of a sim week or so as I'd thought, so this will be pretty much the true beginning of his story in Challengeville. Prior to now, about all that had happened with him is I got him a job in the Business career track, and he'd gotten a couple skill points. Here's a look at the lot info as it was when I began play with him this time.

After considering various challenges that I could impose upon him this time around, I decided to just go with the challenge of trying to achieve his LTW of 5 top level businesses. I've never managed to complete that one before, and indeed, I rarely even do player-owned businesses anymore. And I'm not sure if I've ever run one without using motive hacks or cheats. So, this will be my challege for Sonny. Upon loading his lot the first time, I added on a "garage" to his house to give him a space to open up a home venue business. I figured this would be the easiest one to start with. I kept it pretty basic and plain, as he didn't have a whole lot of money to build with at this point, but it turned out fairly decent I think. I did have to kaching him once to have enough funds to put enough basic items in for a business.

It was Wednesday evening when I loaded up his lot, so after building the addition on his house, the first thing I had him do was go to the phone to start a home business.

And with that, business #1 of 5 was off and running. A few customers showed up right away, and after greeting them and selling them admission tickets, Sonny sat down to play cards with them.

I didn't take a picture of it, but it didn't take very long for the venue to reach Rank 1. And after attending to the business the first night, Sonny mostly left it to run itself after that while I had him concentrate more on getting promotions in his job and trying to find him a wife. I did send him out there to make sales to people occassionally, but other than that it was mostly a hands off venture.

I forget how Sonny spent the next day...it must not have been very memorable, but the following evening the business reached Rank 2.

On Friday, Sonny came home from work with a promotion, and a friend who immediately went and became a customer at the venue.

The business continued to grow fairly quickly on its own, and within another day or two had gotten 2 more ranks.

It was sometime during these first few days that I had Sonny look into TwoJeff's crystal ball to find someone that would be well-suited to him as he hadn't had much luck finding anyone on his own. He didn't really get a chance to talk to her when she spawned, however, as she immediately headed toward the business, and then simply left the lot before he got a chance to talk to her. I let it go for the time being, but he did catch up with her eventually, though more on that in a bit.

The following day at work, a hobby related chance card popped up for him giving him the choice to play poker with some co-workers or not. I chose for him to go play with them, and it netted him a membership card to the Games secret lot.

He came home early that day because of the chance card, and with another promotion.

I hadn't ever gotten the stock market aspiration perk for a Fortune sim before, but after seeing it in action in Veil's Million Dollar Challenge blog I decided to see what it could do for Sonny. As most of his wants since opening the business were business-related ones, it was easy to keep him in platinum, so he had the necessary bonus points to get it in no time. It didn't pan out for him so well right away though.

With an unexpected half-day off, Sonny worked on his sales skills a bit, and the business climbed to Rank 5.

After cleaning up and changing clothes, he went back to it later and finally got his bronze sales badge.

Later that evening, the lady that I had my eye on for him, Alyson Lee, happened to show up at the business, so I had him greet her and ask her on a date. It should be noted that he had spent some time with her on the phone prior to this, so they were already friends and she readily accepted his offer of a date. Things were going well with it until I made the mistake of giving in to their mutual want to play cards together.

This ended up being disastrous for the date, because Alyson refused to get up from the table after she'd sat down, no matter how many other actions I queued up for Sonny to try to draw her away from it. The date timer ran out eventually, and it ended as only an "okay" date.

She did finally get up from the table when it ended to give him a hug, and I immediately had him ask her on another date, which she accepted. This time I didn't let them play cards and things went much better. I let them slow dance together despite the lack of any music, and Sonny discovered his passion for Music & Dance.

After lots of hugs, backrubs, kisses and making out, the date reached Dream Date status for them. The bonus to having the dates in his home venue was that she gained customer loyalty stars as well since she had bought an admission ticket before he asked her for the first date.

By that point, it was late, and Sonny had to work the next day, so I sent him back into the house to go to bed. Alyson hung around and played cards with the other customers, and the business gained another rank.

Though he did have one good day on the stock market, mostly he continued to not have much luck with it. I guess Challengeville's stock market is being hit by the recession as well.

The next night, Alyson came back and left him a karaoke machine as a gift for their great "outing". There wasn't really room for it in the current venue, so it went into his backpack for now for possible use at a future business.

Despite his relative inattentiveness to it, the venue continued to thrive, and Sunday night, or maybe it was Monday night, had reached level 7.

The next day while he was at work, he was awarded the Best of the Best Award for the venue. I had been trying to keep an eye out for reporter types all along, but had never noticed this one being there, so it was a surprise to me when it popped up.

On Tuesday, Sonny got another promotion, though I didn't get a very good picture of it with him in it.

Sonny's week was quickly coming to a close, and I wanted to get him and Alyson fully hooked up together before it ended, so I had him invite her over that night. When she arrived, with a friend, they headed straight for the business as seemed to happen with all visitors to the lot. Undaunted, Sonny went out to greet her and asked her to move in with him. She agreed, bringing a large amount of money with her. This was quite welcome as it gives him the funds he'll need to start a second business the next time.

Once she'd agreed to move in with him, Sonny popped the question, right there in the middle of his poker hall.

The engagement was good for their relationship, though the other customers didn't even seem to notice what was going on. I guess they were too absorbed in their poker games to pay attention to Sonny and Alyson.

Despite her seemingly enthusiastic response to his proposal, Alyson apparently wasn't really sure she'd made the right decision and got a bad memory of it. Sonny, on the other hand, was quite happy about it.

Even though it was the middle of the night by now, Alyson's energy level was still pretty high, so I sent her to do some late night shopping at Nerissa's Clothing Store down the street, where she got herself a few new outfits and a makeover. I think she turned out relatively pretty, though there was only so much I could do to camoflage her extremely wide jaw, and not very much I could do about her enormous lips. Hopefully thier children will take more after Sonny for those traits.

As the clock was ticking down the last hours on this lot, I woke Sonny up early on Wednesday morning, and he and Alyson were married without fanfare in their bedroom with Sonny still in his pajamas. At least they were both happy about it this time.

All in all, I thought the week was a fairly productive one for Sonny. His first business is doing quite well, and I'm sure it's just a matter of time before it reaches Rank 10. With only about 10 days left as an adult now, however, he's going to have to get busy starting more businesses soon if he's going to make it to 5, though I suppose there's always elixir if I need it for him. I might end up elixiring him some anyway just to get his and Alyson's ages more equal, because right now she's considerably younger than him. I guess I'll have to see how things go when I make it back to him again. Maybe I'll even be able to get him to lose the gut next time as well. Here's a final look at the state of the lot as I left it.

Next up on the Challengeville play list: Uncle Chovie. Will the single Family oriented guy be able to find true love and start a family of his own now that his niece Ann has grown up and gone through college and is ready to start her own life? Stay tuned to find out.